I thought while everyone is in the Fourth of July holiday mode it is a good time to write about a patriotic wallpaper, or rather a border. Since I’ve already written in years past about the firecracker wallpaper created for the American Bicentennial, and a scene from Views of the American War of Independence showing...

The 1853 Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations was New York’s answer to the groundbreaking, wildly successful 1851 Great Exhibition in London. It originally took place in what is now Bryant Park, in an enormous Crystal Palace built to rival the iconic Crystal Palace of the previous exhibition. The fair was the brainchild of...